The gospel on celebrity and pop culture

Nick Cannon signs on to judge social media's Shorty Awards

February 23, 2012 | 12:09
pm

Nick Cannon may be slowing things down a bit stepping down from his daily radio show, but he's certainly not stopping: The "America's Got Talent" host has joined the Real-Time Academy and will be one of those judging the Shorty Awards, which on Thursday announced its Vox Populi winners in a number of social media categories.

Cannon joins some good company, including actress and prolific tweeter Alyssa Milano, Foursquare Chief Executive Dennis Crowley, novelist Kurt Andersen and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. The Shortys recognize the best content producers on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Tumblr, YouTube, Quora and the rest of the social web.

"Bribing the judge is always beautiful," Cannon noted, after listing the ways social media has been good to him.

"We're thrilled to welcome Nick Cannon to the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences, a select jury made up of the most incorruptible people on social media," Greg Galant told the Ministry exclusively. Galant is the co-founder and chief executive of Sawhorse Media, which created the Shorty Awards.

So who won already? (Vox Populi equals voice of the people, by the way, for those who missed the movie "Network" — and with the Shortys, it's the person or organizations with the most Twitter nominations in each featured category. And more than 1.6 million nominations were submitted, incidentally.)

In the celebrity category, Korean pop star and actor Kim Jae Joong was tops among the people nominated, along with Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and pop duo Jedward.

"Pretty Little Liars" was the top TV show Vox Pop nominee, along with "Attack of the Show," "The Glee Project," "Vampire Diaries" and "Castle."

And the Ministry's fave category? Why, that would be best fake account, led by people's choice Tusk, @TUSK_IV. Other nominees are the Fake ESPN, @TheFakeESPN; the Doctor, @ItsTheDoctor; Dilma Rousseff, @dilmabr; the DM Reporter, @DMReporter; and Jim Moriarty, @ItsJimMoriarty.